Consumable monitoring
On this page
What the unit can see
Supplies come from the same SNMP pass as the meters, so there is no separate schedule. Each supply reports a current level and a maximum, and the ratio between them is all the device is willing to say. Everything else on this page is the unit making that number useful.
| Supply | Reported as | Reliability |
|---|---|---|
| Toner / ink | Percentage, or a coarse level on cheaper devices | good above 20 % |
| Drum / imaging unit | Percentage of rated life | good |
| Waste toner container | Percentage full, or a binary “near full” | mixed |
| Maintenance kit / fuser | Remaining pages | good where present |
| Staples | Present / empty | poor — many finishers only report empty |
| Ink maintenance box | Percentage full | good on inkjet MFPs |
Thresholds
Two levels per supply class: a warning that starts the ordering conversation, and a critical level that means somebody should be carrying a replacement to the device. Defaults below; every one can be overridden per model or per device.
| Supply class | Warning | Critical | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toner, mono | 20 % | 8 % | A mono cartridge at 8 % still has a few hundred pages in it. |
| Toner, colour | 25 % | 10 % | Colour runs out unevenly; the first empty channel stops the device. |
| Ink tank | 30 % | 12 % | Refilling is slower than swapping a cartridge, so warn earlier. |
| Drum | 15 % | 5 % | Print quality falls off before the counter does. |
| Waste container | 80 % full | 92 % full | A full container stops the machine outright, with no override. |
| Maintenance kit | 8,000 pages left | 2,000 pages left | Kits are ordered, not stocked; leave time. |
mluctl supply threshold show --model "Xerox VersaLink C405"
mluctl supply threshold set --model "Xerox VersaLink C405" --class toner-colour --warn 30 --crit 12
mluctl supply threshold set --device 10.20.4.31 --class waste --warn 70 --crit 88Percentage against page estimate
A percentage means nothing on its own. Twenty per cent on a device that prints forty pages a day is three weeks; on the machine outside the print room it is Thursday. The unit therefore converts every supply level into a date using the device’s own last thirty days of volume, and it is the date that drives ordering.
| Estimate window | Trailing 30 days of daily closing readings |
|---|---|
| Minimum history | 7 days. Below that the console shows the percentage only and says so. |
| Refresh | Once a day, after the closing read |
| Shown as | “empty around 12 Sep” with a confidence band of ±20 % of the remaining days |
Holiday periods distort this badly in both directions. A school fleet in August produces estimates measured in years; treat the first fortnight of any term as unreliable.
Reporting quirks worth knowing
- A new cartridge that reports 40 %. Some platforms report the level of the rated cartridge, not the one fitted. A starter or high-yield cartridge then reads wrong from the moment it goes in. Set a per-device offset rather than arguing with the device.
- Levels that only move in steps of 10. Coarse reporting. The estimate is still useful, the warning point is not — raise the warning threshold so it fires on a step boundary.
- Waste containers that jump from 60 % to full. Common. Where a model is known for it, the shipped profile lowers the warning to 60 % automatically.
- Third-party cartridges that report nothing at all. The supply shows as unknown and is excluded from ordering. This is not a fault to be fixed on the unit.
- An MFP reporting a supply it does not have. Generic profile matching. Confirm against the device, then hide the phantom supply with mluctl supply hide <device> --class staples.
Turning a warning into an order
The unit does not order anything. It produces a list, mails it, and stops there — a box that can spend money unattended is a box that eventually spends it on the wrong thing.
# everything that will run out within three weeks
mluctl supply due --within 21d
# the same list, mailed every Monday morning
mluctl supply schedule add --within 21d --weekly mon --mail supplies@printdoc.digitalThe list gives device, location, supply, part number where the profile knows it, current level and estimated empty date. Anything flagged unknown is listed separately at the bottom so that a silent supply is not mistaken for a full one.